“Don’t be ridiculous. You were in a bad car accident today. Call in sick for a few days.” He tapped his head. “Does that hurt?”
“I do have a headache.”
“So much for relaxing in a warm tub with a glass of wine.” He cocked his head. “You sure you don’t want to see a doctor?”
She pulled at the door handle and said, “I want to get to the bottom of what’s going on at the property.”
Once inside, Sam darted around the mostly empty office, preparing the snake and arrow for a fingerprint request and packing up his laptop.
After Jolene called her boss at the Park Service, she wandered among the desks. She picked up a framed photo of Nash Dillon, his fiancée and their baby.
“Have you seen Nash’s baby yet? He and his fiancée are adopting.”
“I heard that and couldn’t believe it. I sort of thought he was a confirmed bachelor.”
“The baby’s mother was murdered—involved with a drug dealer. Jaycee Lemoin, she was from Paradiso, but not while you lived here.” She put the picture down and sighed. “So much misery.”
“I know about that situation.” He shoved his laptop into his case. “I’m ready to get out of here, but I need to eat and change, not necessarily in that order. If we go out, I need to change first.”
“Can we pick something up or order in? I’m really anxious to see if there have been any other unexplained deaths lately.”
“Any others?”
“Besides my father.” She leveled a finger at him. “And don’t start with me. I never believed he was killed by drug dealers. Why? He was on Yaqui land. Why would the cartels be out there?”
“Good question.” He placed a hand over his chest, over his heart. “And I wasn’t going to say a word. There’s definitely something going on with that project.”
“Y-you haven’t heard anything about the bones yet, have you?”
“Nothing.” He slung his computer case over one shoulder. “You didn’t leave anything that can be tied to you, did you?”
“No.” She put a finger to her lips and rolled her eyes toward the other agent on the phone.
Sam called out to him and raised his hand. “Out of here, Herrera.”
The agent waved them off and kicked his feet up on his desk.
As Sam opened the door for her, he said, “I don’t think he was listening to one word we said, not that he could hear us.”
“It’s better to be careful. I don’t want to be arrested for...illegally dumping bones.”
He squeezed the back of her neck. “Nobody is going to arrest you.”
“Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures, and that’s all I could think of doing to halt that construction short of sabotaging the equipment.”
“That—” Sam beeped the remote for his rental car “—would get you arrested. Promise me you won’t do something like that.”
“I promise. I’m not sure I would even know how to go about doing that.”
“I’m sure you’d think of something.” He opened the passenger door for her. “Pick up or delivery?”
“I’m okay with a pizza delivery. You?”
“I’m so hungry I could’ve eaten that dead snake.” He slammed her door and opened the other side seconds later.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, he asked, “Is it just because your father died there that you want to stop this construction? From everything I hear, it’s going to provide jobs. If there were any endangered species on that land or the construction was going to be a threat to any species, you’d know that by now, right?”
“That’s right. The studies have been done. I even participated in them. Nothing’s going to suffer out there. My father was opposed to it because he wanted the desert to remain in its natural form, but even he recognized the importance of the jobs. I think he would’ve come around eventually. That’s why I can’t understand what happened. Wade and his cronies would’ve had a more difficult approval process had my father been alive, but I think even Wade knew my father would have given in eventually once all the studies came back.”
“You think he might’ve been killed for some other reason?”
She lifted her shoulders to her ears. She couldn’t explain her conviction to Sam. She had no facts, just feelings. “Maybe.”
“Drugs.”
“We’re back to that?” She pulled her phone from her purse and cupped it between her hands.
“Because it makes sense, Jolene. He could’ve witnessed something, found something. There’s a reason the sheriff’s department came to that conclusion.” He tapped her hand. “Are you going to order that pizza?”
“Do you want anything else? Salad?”
“Basic pepperoni is fine or whatever else you want on it. I don’t need salad.”
Sam pulled into the parking lot of his motel and cut the engine. “Do you want to come in? I’ll be just a minute.”
“I’ll wait in the car and order the pizza.”
As he hustled to his room, she phoned in their order for a large pepperoni pizza. Two minutes after she ended the call, Sam appeared in the parking lot, his green uniform swapped out for a pair of light-washed jeans and a dark blue T-shirt she just knew matched his eyes.
He settled behind the wheel and asked, “Pizza ordered?”
“One-track mind. Yes, I ordered the pizza. Let’s get back to my place so we can start our search.”
“One-track mind.”
As they drove past the scene of her accident, Sam rapped a knuckle on the window. “This is where your car went off the road. I can just make out the skid marks. That was a close call. What do you think of Wade’s response when you accused him of fixing your brakes?”
“Deny, deny, deny.” She kicked off her sandal and wedged a bare foot on his dashboard. “I didn’t expect anything else, but I put him on notice. When are you going to return to the construction site? You’d better make a move before the powers that be discover
